


The Rihlander Queen

by Eleanor Green (eldestmuse)



Category: Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
Genre: After the Witch Storm, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldestmuse/pseuds/Eleanor%20Green
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>THE RIHLANDER QUEEN is an AU BJT story with original characters. Vera is one of the only remaining Rihlander Queens and after the death of her protector and mentor must come out of hiding to gather a court to help her reclaim her homeland for her people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Began life as a story for the Blood Rites RPG and then I tried to alter it for a BJTBB but unfortunately, real life got in the way and I missed the deadline.
> 
> The AU elements are: 
> 
> * After the Witch Storm, Jaenelle could not be saved and was lost to the Darkness.  
> * Blaming himself, Daemon took over the family’s Dhemlan interests and threw himself into work.  
> * Saetan stopped drinking blood or yarbarah and followed Jaenelle into the Darkness.  
> * After Saetan’s death, Daemon did get Surreal pregnant, but Lucivar’s misreading of the situation led to his brother to trap him in Hell in a living-death, prompting a slide into the Twisted Kingdom.  
> * With Lucivar dead, Marian returned to Terreille and Falonar became the dominant power in Ebon Rih. When the Keep refused to grant his tithes, he brought in a puppet Queen from Askavi, Terreille, and set about recreating Askavi, Kaeleer according to his vision of how things should be. Many of Lucivar’s followers followed Marian to Terreille, where they established a village eventually ruled by Dorian’s daughter.  
> * In order to secure his hold on Askavi, Kaeleer, Falonar leads a slaughter of Queens until the Rihlanders bow before the Eyrien race as little more than slaves. Though he is eventually killed in a jhinka raid, his policies continue.

**Askavi, Kaeleer**  
 _fifty years after the witch storm_

Vera felt numb. Just barely old enough to understand that her mother was dead and gone, a denizen of the dark Realm and not coming back to cuddle or play, she didn't yet have the emotional capacity to process that pain. Her father, however, did.

As Vera stood back with one of her mother's friends -- an aged, outcast half-breed with bony hands and snow-white hair, wingless but with the golden eyes and darkened skin of the Eyrien people -- he screamed. It was a primal sound, filled with fury and agony, and there was nothing of her beloved Papa in that noise. She clutched her White Jewel tighter in her hands, still chubby with baby fat, and tried to thrust herself in his direction.

The hands on her shoulders tightened and pulled her back. Narrow, wrinkled lips leaned in close to her and whispered, "Not now, child."

"But Papa is upset," she objected, her untrained, Queenly instincts demanding that she help calm him, make him happy again. She didn't understand them, but she didn't have the experience to resist them on her own.

"The Eyriens come."

That was enough to subdue the young girl; though the Eyriens and the Jhinka were as different as a landen from a witch, she still associated wings with what had just happened to her village, and more importantly, to her mother. The raid had come barely a day ago.

She watched as her father, a young Warlord Prince who wore the Summer Sky, turned to face the warriors coming in from the east. There were three of them, flying in a vee. She didn't have the experience or the training to identify their Jewels or their caste, not at this distance, but she could sense the danger they represented through the quailing of the old Black Widow behind her. She shrunk in on herself and tried to make herself inconspicuous.

"What happened here?" the lead Eyrien demanded.

Her father spat, and told them, in words dripping with contempt. She was too young to know that some of that contempt was self-loathing, as well, for he too had not been present to protect his family from the raid.

“Mind your tongue, Rihlander,” snapped his second. Now that they were closer, Vera could see the Rose Jewel at his throat, but her eyes were drawn toward the wings he flared for dramatic effect—and to intimidate. The little girl drew back farther.

But the Warlord Prince was too overwrought to back down in the face of the threat; instead, it sent him to the killing edge. Heedless of the danger he was bringing down on his daughter’s head, unable to control the slick rage coursing through his body, he launched himself at the Warlord. Before the Black Widow could cover her eyes or drag her away, Vera saw the Eyrien’s chest explode in a blast of Summer Sky power. Her father took the Eyrien war blade from the corpse and skewered another Eyrien before either had time to react.

But the patrol leader wore the Purple Dusk, and though he didn’t have a Warlord Prince’s instinctual grasp of the intricacies of violence, he was well-trained and wore a darker Jewel. Her Papa couldn’t break through his shields, and didn’t stand a chance. He held a weapon he didn’t know how to use, and had already drained a fair portion of his power. Not even a Warlord Prince stood a chance, but he tried.

While he kept the patrol leader distracted, the Black Widow dragged her away to safety.


	2. Chapter 2

**Askavi, Kaeleer**  
 _sixty-four years after the witch storm_

There was no body. Vera could only hope that meant her mentor and godmother had made the transition to demon-dead and found some kind of solace in the Dark Realm. The end had come suddenly, it seemed to Vera, but Lady Mora had been old. Maybe not by the standards of the long-lived race that had dictated half her heritage, but her gray hair and wrinkles had indicated a long life. But she had been strong, even in the end, and even years from her prime, Mora’s craft skills had still been strong, her Jewels still filled with power. So maybe she had made it to Hell, if only for a little while.

She went into the Black Widow’s room to begin the painful process of cleaning them out, and found something she hadn’t expected. A tangled web sat waiting for her, its inviting position almost begging her to read what she could of it. Almost without volition, she began to study it. What she saw there made her blood run cold _. Run, run, run away from the black mountain_ the web thrummed, the instruction somehow meant for her. She knew it. _Through the gate and away to the rogue mountains of the heart’s blood._

She couldn’t interpret the whole message; it spoke of variables she didn’t understand. She was only a journeymaid, and her training hadn’t focused on tangled webs. But she grasped the main details, and barely stopped to vanish necessities before fleeing the cottage for a web that would take her to the nearest Territory that boasted a gate. She knew better than to brave petitioning the Keep. There were too many Eyriens guarding access, and she didn’t trust her ability to make it there safely.

For the first time in her life, she was alone. Loneliness wasn’t a new feeling for her, but she had never before been _alone_. If she hadn’t felt the urgency of the web’s warning, she would have stopped at one of the villages Mora had considered safe, and asked for an escort. They would have given it to her—Vera was one of the only Rihlander Queens still alive. The Eyriens had taken the purge of the Queens very seriously, and had subjugated the few who remained utterly, using them to rule over lesser Rihlander villages and whore their people into slavery.

Only the greatest secrecy and care had kept Vera alive and free, and though Lady Mora had taken the time to ensure she was known to her people, she had deemed it too dangerous to permit her a retinue. In fact, the Rihlanders didn’t even know her true identity. She had spent most of her life wrapped under spells to keep her caste hidden, except during secret meetings with village leaders. Whispers of a Queen called “The Tiger” — so called because of the Jewel she wore as her Birthright — kept hope alive in the mountains of Askavi, but that was all the Eyriens had to go on when they ruthlessly searched out the resistance… because there wasn’t one. There was only hope that when it was time for her Offering, she could establish a court strong enough to lead the Rihlanders into reclaiming their Territory.

Few believed she would. Even if she came away with the Purple Dusk, it wasn’t a dark Jewel. There was no chance she would have the depth of power to rival the Eyriens ruling Askavi. But hope was all they had, and just as she was being groomed, carefully and in secret, there were strong Warlords and Warlord Princes being hidden away—sent away, in some cases, to family or friends in far-flung Territories--until the time was ripe.

According to Protocol, she could have established a court four years ago at the age of seventeen, when her apprenticeship in the Black Widow’s craft had ended. She had chafed at the delay, wanting to make her Offering and gather a court to her, but older, wiser heads had prevailed. She was too young, had too little experience, and the threats were too great. She needed more time to mature. So at seventeen, she had begun traveling throughout the territory, as always disguised as a simple Black Widow, to get a more intimate feeling for what her people endured. It was a task that should have fallen to a trusted Warlord Prince, but there were none she trusted… and most were too young.

And at twenty-one, she was on her own. She had never been in love, never been served, and knew nothing of war or the ways Blood fought. But she trusted her instincts as a Black Widow, even if she’d suppressed those of a Queen, and knew that Askavi was no longer safe.

The Yellow wind took her and her vanished belongings to a coach station, where she bribed a driver into taking her west along the Purple Dusk wind, then spelled him to think she had been a young Warlord visiting a cousin for his birthday. She walked from the landing web into the village, and tried not to flinch away from the bustle of villagers chatting and traveling from cottage to shop. It was outside of her experience.

Ebon Rih was protected by the Keep, and the Eyriens hadn’t been allowed to pursue their agenda in the valley, despite their attempts in the beginning. But it was only a valley, and couldn’t hold all of the Rihlanders. The Eyriens hadn’t been interested in Askavi’s coastal territories, and so those had been safe, as well. But having the Eyriens for neighbors had cast a shadow over her people, and their depredations had created a certain depression even where they themselves chose not to often go.

This village was nothing like those in Askavi. Children played in well-tended yards, fearless, while groups of young people eyed each other from across the streets. She wanted this for Askavi so badly it made her ache.

“Can I help you?” a Warlord asked, startling her.

She realized she had stopped walking and was just staring at the village. She also realized that the Warlord wore the badge of a guard. She flushed. “Is there somewhere I can have something to eat?” she asked. “Traveler’s fare, nothing fancy.” She had marks, both those she had inherited from her guardian and those earned by her own efforts as a Black Widow, but she didn’t know how long she would be traveling and wasn’t sure how much she could stretch them.

The Warlord smiled. The expression froze a little when he noticed the hourglass pendant at her throat, then swiftly settled into something welcoming, which surprised her. Black Widows weren’t terribly common among the Rihlanders, and those the Eyriens had brought to Askavi had engendered a lot of fear. “There’s an inn,” he told her. “Hearty food, mostly. Bread, soup, sandwiches and casseroles.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Vera said with feeling.

“I’ll walk you there.”

She almost told him she didn’t need an escort, but even though he couldn’t know she was a Queen, she bit back the words. This wasn’t her village, and while she felt safe here and wasn’t a threat, he was a guard. If he felt it was his duty—or even if he was simply being polite—she shouldn’t interfere with that. So she just thanked him.

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“Hm?”

“You asked for traveler’s fare. We don’t get many folks traveling through, so I was wondering where you were going.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip, but decided not to lie. She had covered her tracks up to this point, and this simple village guard had no idea who she was. Beyond the illusion spell over her features, she looked nothing like herself. There was nothing to indicate she was even a Rihlander. “I’m trying to find the Dark Altar. I need to speak with the Priestess there.”

“You came to the right place, then. The innkeeper’s daughter is her apprentice.”

“It must be my lucky day,” Vera said, then immediately regretted the words. Mora was dead. There was nothing lucky about the day.


End file.
